Saving Seafood

WASHINGTON: $3M will help tribes study salmon reintroduction in the Upper Columbia Basin

April 12, 2022 — Bringing salmon back to the Upper Columbia River will take a lot of time and a lot of money, according to the Upper Columbia United Tribes.

The tribes recently received $3 million from Washington’s supplemental budget — a big chunk of change that tribes said will help kick off the second phase of a decades-long study.

However, the tribes still will need to find significant funding sources, especially from federal agencies, to cover the entire study phase, which adds up to an estimated $176 million spread over 21 years, said Laura Robinson, a policy analyst with Upper Columbia United Tribes.

Recently, momentum has built to help along the Upper Columbia reintroduction studies, Robinson said.

“To get this large investment of funds from the Washington state Legislature and governor is really helping increase this momentum,” Robinson said.

Read the full story at OPB News

 

Off Washington state’s coast, crabbers get early start to season, haul in bounty of Dungeness crab

January 6, 2022 — Some 60 vessels in Washington’s oceangoing crab fleet worked through a stormy December to bring in more than 4.69 million pounds of Dungeness in a strong start to the annual harvest.

For fishers, processors and retailers, this is a welcome change from the past six years when the season hasn’t started until Dec. 31 or later due to the lack of meat in the crabs or the presence of domoic acid, a marine biotoxin.

The Dungeness crab, as well as shrimp and razor clams, have benefited from improved ocean conditions of the Northwest coasts with strong cold-water upwellings of the past year bringing nutrients and helping to strengthen the base of the marine food web.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

 

Declining Salmon Population Threatens Fishing Tourism in Pacific Northwest

August 24, 2021 — Beneath the vacancy sign at the Salmon River Motel, a black and white placard reads “Salmon Lives Matter, Give a Dam.” For years the motel has been a profitable business in this canyon town of 400 three hours north of Boise, with a mile-long Main Street that swells each summer with visiting sport fishermen.

Now the motel and other businesses here are at risk, as the fish that drive the local economy shrink in both number and size.

This year, regional fish and wildlife agencies recorded one of the smallest counts of adult spring Chinook salmon in a generation in the Snake and Columbia river basin. Last year was worse. A wide body of research connects their decline to rising temperatures and climate change, which have compounded the damage done to fish populations by hydroelectric dams.

The impact of this decline ripples along this species’ entire migratory route, from the tourist economies and tribal communities of the inland Northwest to the $2 billion commercial fishing industry in ocean waters as far as Alaska, where state fisheries report total harvest weight has dropped by half since the 1960s.

Across the inland Pacific Northwest, dwindling salmon runs have emptied motel rooms, tackle shops and restaurants. Business in Riggins this summer beat expectations as pandemic fears eased, but the continuing decline of the sought-after Chinook—the largest of all Pacific salmon—threatens to devastate economies and tribes throughout the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal

Pacific Northwest heat wave sets up ‘grim’ migration for salmon on Columbia, Snake rivers

June 30, 2021 — This is shaping up to be a dire summer for fish and trees.

Temperatures in the Columbia and Snake rivers are already within two degrees of the slaughter zone of 2015, when half the sockeye salmon run was lost because of high water temperatures. An estimated 250,000 sockeye died that year long before reaching their spawning grounds.

The sockeye run is at its peak right now just as temperatures hit record highs across Washington state and in Idaho. Spring and summer chinook and steelhead migrating in the rivers also are at risk.

Salmon are cold-water animals. Temperatures above 62 degrees make them more vulnerable to disease, and as temperatures climb higher, they will stop migrating altogether.

The risk of heat stress is present in the mainstem rivers, but also in fish ladders, where salmon will turn around and head back down river if the temperature is higher at the top of the ladder than where they entered it. Cooling water released at the top of the ladders can only do so much as air temperatures reach unprecedented highs.

Water temperatures are already at dangerous levels despite an earlier start to cold-water releases from deep in the Dworshak Dam, on the Clearwater River, upstream of Lower Granite Dam on the Lower Snake River. Nonetheless, temperatures in the tailrace at Lower Granite are still edging above safe levels for salmon and are even hotter downriver.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

Warming seas could wipe out Snake River chinook by 2060, scientists predict

February 19, 2021 — Snake River spring-summer chinook could be nearly extinct by 2060 and interventions are “desperately needed” to boost survival in every stage of their lives, scientists warn.

The findings, published Thursday in the journal Communications Biology, modeled survival of eight populations of wild Snake River Basin spring-summer chinook during the ocean phase of their life, under various climate-warming scenarios.

Salmon hatch in rivers, but mature for years at sea before they return to the waters of their birth. It is a perilous life cycle that could become all but impossible for some already fragile salmon populations that make one of the most arduous of all journeys, all the way to Idaho. They travel more than 1,800 miles round trip, climb more than a mile in elevation, and tackle eight dams, each way: four on the main stem Columbia, then four more on the Lower Snake River.

Add just a little ocean warming, and it’s curtains. Populations declined in all eight basin chinook populations for which the scientists ran predictions. Just a little more than 1 degree Celsius temperature increase in sea-surface temperature produced dire effects — with mortality as high as 90% in warmer seas.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

ALASKA: ‘Brutal’ start to 2021 crabbing

February 17, 2021 — It was a hectic and hazardous opening weekend for commercial crab fishermen and the Coast Guard monitoring the fleet.

Commercial crabbing kicked off in Washington with a majority of fishermen dropping their first load of pots late last week for a 73-hour day soak period.

Fishermen reported encountering challenging conditions during their initial trips offshore with rogue waves, freezing rain and dense fog combined with usual turbulence of crossing the Columbia River Bar in boats loaded with crab pots.

Fishermen described the opening weekend conditions as “gnarly,” “brutal,” and in some instances “the worst they’ve ever seen.” One said he was simply grateful there weren’t any deaths despite some close calls.

Read the full story at The Chinook Observer

Connecting Fishermen with Hungry Communities Can also Benefit Local Food Systems

September 15, 2020 — While delivering food boxes this summer to tribal communities in Oregon’s Columbia River watershed, Bobby Rodrigo was floored by what he saw. Tribal members were living in campers and RVs with no electricity, a single hose for running water, and no permanent structures except for a bathroom. Meant to be temporary, these “in-lieu fishing communities” were created in the 1950s when the federal government-built dams that forced tribal members to leave their ancestral fishing grounds.

It was like “being in a homeless shelter, without the infrastructure,” said Rodrigo, who is part Mohawk, a member of the Native American Committee of the American Bar Association, and legal and operations director for We Do Better Relief.

Rodrigo was handing out food boxes as part of a pandemic relief effort led by a new Pacific Northwest coalition called The Wave. Efforts started earlier that day at an event in Cascade Locks, Oregon, focused on tribal members, but open to the public, before moving out to the in-lieu fishing communities.

Rodrigo brought 850 pounds of fresh-frozen Alaskan lingcod, a type of groundfish, to add to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farmers to Families Food Boxes provided by the Oregon Food Bank. The Wave also provided a food truck, KOi Fusion, that served 400 free teriyaki fish rice bowls, cooked with more of the lingcod.

Read the full story at Civil Eats

OREGON: Federal plan for Columbia River system dams sees opposition

September 3, 2020 — A final plan impacting the Columbia River system released earlier this month has some anglers and conservationists still looking for more answers.

The Preferred Alternative in the Columbia River System Operational Final Environmental Impact Statement includes structural modifications to some of the dams to benefit passage of adult salmon, steelhead and Pacific lamprey.

Greg Haller, of Pacific Rivers, said the plan does not represent a major system overall and he is not convinced the spill option benefits juvenile fish.

“Going with a flexible spill agreement as a long-term solution is a bad choice,” he said. “Breaching the dams has been identified as the best thing for fish. I think they gave that analysis short shrift.”

Additionally, proposed operational changes in the upper basin would avoid adverse effects to resident fish, including federally protected bull trout and Kootenai River white sturgeon.

Read the full story at The East Oregonian

NMFS authorizes sea lion removals to save Columbia River salmon

August 28, 2020 — Up to 716 sea lions may be removed from a Columbia River management zone over the next five years to reduce the animals’ impact on salmon and steelhead populations, under a new federal authorization granted to states and tribes in the U.S. Northwest.

In 2018, the U.S. Congress amended the Marine Mammal Protection Act to allow removal of sea lions from a stretch of the Columbia River between the I-205 bridge on Portland’s east side and McNary Dam. The change also allowed for removing sea lions from Columbia River tributaries below the McNary Dam that are spawning habitat for threatened or endangered salmon and steelhead runs.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

SEATTLE TIMES: Sea lion culling is necessary for salmon runs

August 20, 2020 — One of the most obvious, inexpensive and beneficial ways to help endangered salmon will begin in earnest this winter.

Some of the sea lions that travel far up the Columbia River to gorge on dwindling salmon and steelhead runs will be culled by a coalition of states and tribes in the river basin.

Congress and regulators made the right call in allowing this to happen.

Sea lions may eat up to 44% of the Columbia spring chinook run and 25% of the Willamette River winter steelhead run each year, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

A federal permit issued last week rightly authorizes the removal of up to 540 California sea lions and 176 Steller sea lions over the next five years, though far fewer are expected to be taken.

Read the full opinion piece at The Seattle Times